Poetry (translated)

Job Degenaar (born in Dubbeldam, The Netherlands – 1952), poet and singer

Between 1976 and 2017 a dozen volumes of poetry by Degenaar were published. He published in many magazines, anthologies and newspapers poetry and articles about literature. His poetry is deeply felt and not explicitly committed. This commitment is put in practice by his presidency for ten years of the Writers in Prison Committee for PEN Netherlands and his presidency nowadays of the PEN Emergency Fund. His broad outlook upon life veers in his poetry towards melancholy, yet his work offers consolation to the reader. The poems are inviting, open one’s eyes to the wider world thanks to the fine observations of the world traveler and the precise formulation of the poet.

Evensong

Letting the day go by until
it became night and in the fruit bowl
the forgotten tangerine withered

in the distance the city glowed,
igniting on its own

what was alive in icy fields
crawled into cocoons, raised
prickles against the stars

Only the diamond sky-hunters
cutting silently into granite
took us along, struck us off

until morning brought us bread
and words, as birds did twigs

Translation: Willem Groenewegen

Haiku

Alle geluid

droeg de leeuwerik

in zijn eentje boven de wei

Todo sonido

a espaldas de la alondra

volando sobre la pradera

Roeien in de nacht

telkens maar even schommelt

de maan in de vijver

Remar en la noche

y la luna meciéndose

intermitente en el estanque

Een klompje merel

het doodst is hij als de wind

z’n veertjes optilt

Un montoncito de mirlo

más muerto cuando el viento

levanta sus plumas

Ik keek naar een ster

en onder mij zakte

de aarde langzaam weg

Yo miraba una estrella

y bajo mis pies la tierra

hundiéndose lentamente

Traducción: Mariolein Sabarte

Homecoming

Wholeheartedly lived against death

till something unexpected mirrors you

for instance in a poem, so

fragile that you never thought

that it existed

That wrings itself

through all your pores, rises

from the paper and

looks at you like a doe

That is a homecoming:

to see who you are

in this moment

Translation: Annmarie Sauer, Ich bin / I am (2012)

Orpheus on the Breton coast

On an idle afternoon,
when my lyre was hanging on the willows,
I ripped off tens of mussels,
threw them alive in boiling local wine,
destroyed a lobster with a tongs
and speared snails out of their bunkers

heroically my hands soaked
afterwards in lemon juice

That night I rowed on the sea and came
into a gully that took me to the Styx

Hades, with a soft heart, gave me another
chance to fetch Eurydice -

If only I had looked round
- she was already almost above ground -
at the nymph that passed me

the first rays of the sun just caught
Poseidon's sardonic look of triumph